


The Tale of the Wolf and the Hare

by SonneillonV



Category: Changeling: The Lost, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonneillonV/pseuds/SonneillonV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief love story, told by Tiernan Darkweaver of the Autumn Court, Hampton County Freehold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Wolf and the Hare

Do you want me to tell you a story?  A scary story?

 

No?  But it’s tradition.  When All Hallows Eve approaches and the nights grow long, as the world goes down into winter and darkness, we tell the stories of the things that hide in the dark.  Even Christmas Eve has a ghost-story tradition.  That’s why all of you have heard of Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

Still no?  Well, all right.

 

A love story?  Really?  Aren’t you a little young for those?

 

Hahahahah, take it easy.  I don’t mean anything by it.  I don’t remember being your age, you know… that happened before I was Taken.  But I can tell you a love story if you really want me to.  Contrary to rumor, scary stories aren’t the only ones I know.  Let me tell you about… the Wolf and the Hare.

 

No, not the Tortoise and the Hare, that’s a different one.  A moral fable.  This one’s just a love story, if any tale about passion and terror and pride can really be called ‘just’ a love story.  It’s even got a happy ending; nothing to be afraid of.  Unless, of course, you’ve heard other stories about the Big Bad Wolf.

 

Of course you have.  He shows up in Little Red Riding Hood, in Peter and the Wolf, in the Three Little Pigs.  He’s a hunter in the darkness, devourer of innocence.  Sometimes the stories make him out to be a fool, but you should know the stories you’ve heard are mostly newer versions, sanitized for modern sensibilities.  In the old stories, the wolf won as often as he lost, and even those who escaped him sometimes left bits of themselves behind.  So you understand who I’m speaking of when I say, ‘The Big Bad Wolf’ and you understand that it’s a True thing, a Real thing, the way myths and legends are real.  He stalks the trods in Faerie hunting those who dare to set foot in his forest.  I’ve seen him.  If you wander too far off the beaten path, risk too much in the Hedge, he might just come and gobble you up.

 

The Wolf in our story was not The Big Bad Wolf, though.  He’s just a wolf, a Beast, with thick black fur and burning red eyes.  His hands were tipped in vicious claws.  He had thick, powerful teeth that could shear the tail off a cow with one snap, clean as a razor.  He was strong and brawny and he smelled like male musk and the deep woods.  Because he was strong, and because he claimed bloody victory against every challenger, other changelings feared him, and he drank deep of their fear and joined the Autumn Court to inspire more.  On dark and rain-swept streets he stalked the unwary, and hunted hunters in the deep woods, and prowled the shadows of nightclubs with strobe lights reflecting the predator’s sheen in his eyes, making sweet, tender young things shiver with fear and illicit desire.

 

Is that a little too mature for you?  Oh, of course.  Whatever you say.

 

Sometimes his prey surrendered to him.  Sometimes people crave wildness and danger.  Good girls want bad boys, haven’t you heard that?  It goes beyond gender, to the heart of a human - fear and attraction lie close in us.  And those who surrendered, he gobbled them up, and left them mostly whole… and if they woke up aching, wanting, missing whatever he took, well… that’s a life lesson everyone has to learn sooner or later.  There’s a price for the things we want most, for dancing on the edge of the razor.

 

As for the Wolf, he was empty too.  These tender morsels were satisfying for a time, but like candy and sweets, they couldn’t fill him up.  They couldn’t sate his real hunger, that gnawing, devouring instinct that yearned to hunt, to chase, to capture, and finally to own.  He craved something more.

 

The Hare in our story was a Runnerswift.  No sweet and tender morsel, he.  He had fluffy white fur and a floppy little tail and long, strong legs for running and jumping.  He had big, long ears that swiveled to find danger, and bright black eyes and a nose that twitched and wiggled.  He was tall and lean and fast, and despite all appearances, he was not prey.  He emerged from the Hedge with blood on his claws and on his mouth and joined the Summer Court almost on the spot.  His swift arms and strong shoulders could knock the sense from an ogre.  His big rabbit feet kicked with enough power to stun a troll.  If he was a rabbit, he was a prince among rabbits, a blooded warrior.  He took to the ways of summer like a fish to water and he seemed to have no fear, except for the Wolf.

 

The Wolf noticed him, of course.  When such perfect prey, a challenge, crosses your path how can you fail to notice?  From the first catch of the scent, from the first sparkle of black eyes, the Wolf stalked the Hare.  At Court Functions, through Freehold Holdings, at the Goblin Markets, he would appear, smiling a toothy smile, hunter’s eyes gleaming.  He was no bully - his teasing was purely semantic.  Semantic.  It means that he used words.  Words, glances, soft growls, and the crowding bulk of his presence to catch the Hare’s eye, to get just a little too close, to let the Hare smell his predator’s scent.  At first, the Hare snapped at him, but that only seemed to amuse the Wolf.  Then the Hare tried to ignore him, but the Wolf only pushed his boundaries farther, stealing small touches and sending little gifts by proxy to remind the Hare of his attentions.  Finally, he stole a formal dance, sweeping in with a smile and a hunter’s grace, all courtesy and decorum and burning, hungry eyes.  In frustration, the Hare challenged him in front of the Court.  He challenged the Wolf to a fight.

 

But to his surprise, the Wolf turned him down.  You see, when anyone is challenged by another, they have the right to determine the nature of the challenge.  That is why challenges should be made with care and forethought, because you may find yourself fighting a battle that plays to your opponent's strengths, not your own.  The Wolf claimed the right to decide the nature of the challenge, to pick the battleground on which their quarrel would be won or lost.  So the Wolf declared that their challenge would be, not a standing battle, but a hunt over the three nights of the dark moon.  Through the dangerous borderland of the Hedge, the Hare would run and the Wolf would chase.  And if by the third night the Wolf had not caught the Hare, the Wolf would swear on the name of his Keeper to leave the Hare alone and never bother him again.  But if, in three night’s time, the Wolf captured his prey and earned his surrender, then the Hare would be his.  Not as a slave, or a debtor, or any such drudgery, but as a lover; if in three nights he could capture and subdue his quarry, then his beloved must accept him as worthy.

 

The Hare had the option to retract the challenge, if he chose.  You mustn't believe he entered into contract unwillingly.  To turn down a courting challenge doesn’t carry the loss of face that turning down a hostile challenge does, for the passions of the Lost must be real - faking feelings is the practice of the Gentry, and we always strive never to be like them, lest we attract their notice.  So the Hare considered the Wolf as a suitor, and the understood the terms of his challenge, and there before the court he accepted the terms.  The vow was witnessed and the contract was set - on the first night of the next dark moon, members in good standing from the Summer and Autumn Courts would see their representatives to a gateway into the Hedge for the start of the chase.  The Hare was allowed a five minute head start.  As a Runnerswift, he scoffed, thinking the Wolf was making this too easy for him.  When the timekeeper, a neutral party from the Winter Court, pressed the button on his stopwatch, he dashed off like a flash of white lightning, and soon even the flag of his floppy tail had vanished into the Hedge.

 

The Wolf waited.

 

And he waited.

  
And he waited.

 

When five minutes passed, members of the Summer Court were shocked, and perhaps a bit insulted, when the Wolf did not run or bound or dash.  Instead, he used his magic to take four-legged form and he stepped into the Hedge, setting an easy, loping pace.  Soon he too had disappeared from sight and the Changelings of the Courts went their separate ways, because three days was much too long to sit around and wait.

 

On the first night, the Hare simply ran.  He ran until he was exhausted, until he had to stop and rest, and he felt he had put enough distance between them.  So like the Hare in the story of the race with the tortoise, he found himself a comfortable spot to take a bit of leisure.  But then, before very much time had passed, he heard a distant howl on the wind.  It was much nearer than he thought it should be, dangerously near.  And so the Hare began to run again.

 

Again he ran until he could run no more, a mad dash for freedom.  Again, he paused to rest.  But then, even before he had really recovered himself, he heard the howl nearby.  The Wolf, he perceived, was not pacing him but he was following steadily, inexorably, on his trail.  The Hare tried to keep his spirits up - surely the Wolf would tire.  He needed rest and sleep just like any other mortal.

 

The problem was, so did the Hare.

 

All night and all day the Hare ran in fits and spurts.  All night and all day, the Wolf followed at a relentless pace.  Finally, exhausted, the Hare began to try for other solutions.

 

The second night, the Hare got crafty.  He climbed trees and leaped from limb to limb like a raccoon.  He came down in a stream and trekked as far as he could upriver before climbing out.  He snuck past sleeping hedge beasts and natural hazards, hoping they would slow his pursuer.  He ran circles, and even laid a clumsy trap or two… clumsy, since snares weren’t his specialty.  As the sun sank, he found a hiding place and settled down to get some desperately-needed rest.

 

It was barely noon when the sound of howls woke him.  They sounded closer than ever.

 

On the third night, the Hare went to ground.  With his big, scoop-shaped feet and his clever claws he scooped earth and burrowed down into the roots of a thorny bramble.  If the Wolf couldn’t reach him, the Wolf couldn’t catch him.  That was his reasoning.  Soon he heard the howls getting closer and closer.  Then he heard the sound of hedge birds fleeing.  Then he heard the sniff-snuffling, the scrape-scratching of something nosing around the entrance of his burrow.

 

You see, the Hare had miscalculated one thing.  Usually, a wolf won’t dig a hare out of a burrow.  It’s too much energy for too little gain, and they have to eat to keep going.  But this Wolf had no other prey to hunt, no pack to travel with, no territory to mark.  He had one goal and one goal only, and his goal was hiding at the end of a hastily-dug tunnel.  And since the Hare was not really much smaller than the Wolf, the Wolf’s great big paws and clever claws and snuffling nose widened it just enough for him to wiggle through inch by inch by inch.

 

And so the final night of the hunt became a race of a different sort.  The wolf dug into the burrow and the Hare struggled to dig out of it.  They wiggled and squirmed and showered dirt.  They chewed through roots and smashed mud and grubs into their fur.  Finally, the Hare reached the surface and thrust his head out into the night air, but no sooner had he pulled his big, fluffy tail out of the hole than the Wolf’s shadow blocked the starlight.  Seeing how his quarry intended to escape, he had backed out of the burrow and waited patiently for the Hare to come back up, digging and growling behind him from the surface to make sure he continued to flee the safety of his hole.  And when the Wolf faced him, the Hare took the only option left to him, and that was to stand and fight.

 

The Hare was very powerful.  His swift arms and strong shoulders could knock the sense from an ogre.  His big rabbit feet kicked with enough power to stun a troll.  He was fast and lean and he had no fear, but he had run too fast and too far.  For wolves are pursuit-predators, you see, and they can travel miles, hours, days on the hunt without tiring.  As the Wolf closed in, it was bitter exhaustion that felled the Hare, that made his arms a little bit slower and his legs just a little weaker.  Or at least, that was what he told himself.  Maybe the truth is a little different.  

 

Regardless, they fought on that moonless night, in a field of grass gleaming with faery lights.  It was a long fight, as fights go.  No, really, most real battles are swift and brutal between two people.  It’s not like what you see in the movies.  It only takes one good hit, one injury, one loss of breath to resolve a real fight.  When no one is timing rounds, when there’s no water bottle and warm towel waiting for a fighter in his corner, a battle is a thirsty, gasping, desperate thing.  At some point, win or lose, both parties desperately want it to be over.  And despite the Hare’s best efforts at evasion and trickery, this battle was soon over.  The Wolf felled him, and claimed him, and demanded his surrender, and the Hare gave it because he knew that he had lost.

 

In a field full of faery lights, on a moonless night, the Wolf made the Hare his lover.  And he was as steady, and as relentless, and as indefatigable in that effort as in all others.  But he was gentle also, because he had earned his prize, and because both the victory and the surrender were fairly won.  And the Hare learned to thrill at the shivers down his spine, at the butterflies in the belly that the Wolf gave him, because for all Spring and Autumn would protest that they are opposites, in the hearts of humans fear and desire lie close together.  And the Lost are, at the core of us, still human.

 

What should I say now, that they lived happily ever after?  That their passion shamed the most extravagant of Spring Courtiers?  That they shared victory and defeat, and earned many honors in the name of the Freehold, and their Courts, and for their own motley, which they formed together and made known in myth and song throughout all the Courts of the Lost?  All that is true.  But what I would prefer to say is that I have known them, and I have seen them, and I have told their story before.  If you take anything away from my telling, I hope you at least take this: that we know the things that hunt us in the night are real.  What we fear, and what we dread, isn’t just a tale to frighten children.  We have known real terror, and real suffering, and it has marked us in ways we will never erase.  

 

Your elders have told you to heed that voice of fear, that voice of instinct, because it will guide you and others to the right path, away from the dangers of Arcadia.  But as you acknowledge and embrace your fear, never forget that more awaits you in the mortal world, in this banal life.  Love, courage, and happiness can be found here, if you’re able to overcome the binding fears, the ones that hold you back.  Those gifts are for everyone, Summer and Winter, Spring and Autumn alike.  Sometimes the cost is high.  But if you embrace the cost, you will find great rewards, treasures you never dreamed of, treasures the Kindly Ones have never seen.  Human treasures that lighten human souls.

 

Anyway, that’s my story.  Let them hear it who will.

 

 


End file.
